1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a text editing method and apparatus for editing multiple page document data which can be edited in increments of one object which are contained in each page.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most of electronic documents used in offices, shops, and the like are formed from a plurality of pages. For example, the business form of presentation materials at a meeting, accounts, or the like has a plurality of pages in most cases. In order to edit a document having a plurality of pages, the operator executes an application program or the like capable of editing the document. The operator displays a page to be edited on the display by, for example, operating the cursor key or clicking a specific icon (e.g., page turning) in accordance with predetermined operation procedures of the program. Then, the operator performs editing work such as a change of a figure or correction of the text in the displayed target page, and thereby edits the target part in accordance with the operation.
The editing operation includes movement or copying of an object (e.g., a figure) present in a given page to another page. Such editing operation targeting a plurality of pages includes (1) display of a moving (copy) source page, and (2) cutting (or copying) of a figure to be moved (copied). Another editing operation includes (3) display of a moving (copy) destination page, and (4) paste of a figure to be moved (copied) (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-282416).
When editing each page, the operator displays one page and edits it by a predetermined operation. The operator repeats this operation for each of pages. This editing procedure is employed in, e.g., Microsoft Power Point.
According to the prior art, when editing a document of a plurality of pages, the operator must display all pages to be edited one by one and edit the displayed pages. For examples the editing operation is to move dispersed objects existing in a plurality of pages to one page and combine them, or to copy an object contained in one page to a plurality of pages. The operator must perform an editing operation associated with one copy source (or moving source) page and a plurality of copy destination (or moving destination) pages while switching the display between one copy source (or moving source) page and a plurality of copy destination (or moving destination) pages. This decreases the working efficiency and productivity, and inevitably causes edit errors by an operation error because pages are manually edited one by one. The same problems occur in a case where the editing operation targets a plurality of copy source (or moving source) pages and one copy destination (or moving destination) page.
The same problems also arise when editing objects present in a plurality of pages. For example, to accurately align figures A, B, and C respectively laid out in pages 1, 2, and 3 when editing a 3-page document, the user must adjust the coordinates of figures A, B, and C to the same value while switching between the pages. In most cases, the coordinates of a figure are set by, e.g., inputting numerical values into a dialog box, which is very cumbersome work. Similarly, the user must input numerical values in simultaneously moving figures while keeping the positional relationship of figures between pages. This work puts a heavy burden on the user.
The business form includes a continuous business form having a series of similar business form pages. An example of the continuous business form is a three-page business form in which fields (areas in which data are located) contained in respective pages do not always match each other. For example, the first page of the continuous business form has three fields for inputting the name, age, and address. The second page of the continuous business form has two fields for inputting the name and address. The third page of the continuous business form has two fields for inputting the name and age. In the continuous business form, respective pages contain similar fields. In creating fields, the user edits fields page by page, the field size and field layout position change between pages, resulting in a poor appearance.
As described above, the productivity decreases in editing a plurality of pages because editing processing proceeds while switching between the pages. Further, when editing a plurality of pages and performing common editing operations such as movement, copying, and alignment of objects for the respective pages, the user must edit the pages one by one. Hence, the operability decreases as the number of pages to be edited increases.